Age‐related changes in memory reactivation by 1‐ and 2‐year‐old human infants

Abstract

In three experiments, we examined the effect of a single reactivation treatment on retention by 1- and 2-year-old human infants who were tested in the visual recognition memory (VRM) paradigm. In all experiments, infants were familiarized with a visual stimulus and were tested after a delay. In the absence of a reactivation treatment, infants of both ages exhibited forgetting but exposure to a reactivation treatment alleviated forgetting after the same delay. When the duration of the original familiarization period was only 10 s, the minimum duration of an effective reminder treatment was 1 s for 2-year-olds, but was 5 s for 1-year-olds. When the duration of the original familiarization period was increased to 30 s, however, a 1-s reminder also alleviated forgetting by 1-year-olds.

Effects of viewing ordered pictorial reminders on long-term memory in the first year of life

“…These data suggest that pictures can be effective reminders of events even for very young infants. The results are consistent with findings from studies using live re-enactments to measure effects of reminders (Barr et al, 2005; Bauer et al, 2001; Galluccio & Rovee-Collier, 2005; Hayne & Rovee-Collier, 1995; Morgan & Hayne, 2005; Rovee-Collier, Hartshorn, & DiRubbo, 1999). The results extend those findings to show that pictures, as well as live presentations, can facilitate memory in young infants.…”

“…Various kinds of dynamic reminders have been shown to improve memory performance in visual recognition (Morgan & Hayne, 2005), and deferred imitation tasks (Barr, Rovee-Collier, & Campanella, 2005; Bauer, Wiebe, Waters, & Bangston, 2001; Hudson & Sheffield, 1998; Sheffield & Hudson, 1994). For example, Bauer and colleagues (2001) provided 9-month-olds with a recall test and live re-enactment as a reminder 1 week after initial exposure to events in a deferred imitation task.…”

Socioeconomic disparities in neurocognitive development in the first two years of life

“…The Visual Paired Comparison (VPC) task (Morgan & Hayne, 2006) assesses the degree to which children remember a familiar visual stimulus by comparing looking time to the familiar stimulus versus a novel stimulus. This task has been used in past studies of short-term and long-term visual recognition memory (Pascalis & de Haan, 2003).…”

Nonspecific verbal cues alleviate forgetting by young children

“…More recently, the procedure has also been used to study memory retrieval by exposing participants to a reminder treatment prior to the retention test. Morgan and Hayne (2006a), for example, familiarized 1‐ and 2‐year‐olds with a visual stimulus and tested them after a delay. Some participants were briefly exposed to the familiar stimulus as a reminder immediately prior to the test.…”